I took the hormone injection and pills. That night, my vaginal spotting deteriorated into bleeding, followed by cramps around the abdomen. Panicking, and kicking ourselves for not asking what effects the hormone treatment will have on the woman, my partner and I scoured the Internet, trawling through online medical journals, US and UK based chat forums, searching to understand if these are the "normal" side effects of women taking progesterone.

We decided to get a second opinion the next day. The second gynaecologist confirmed that she would have done the same and sent us off with more progesterone pills and the same advice to have bed rest.

Four weeks and three expensive private consultations later, interspersed by scary bleeding episodes and meanwhile devouring any information we could on the Internet and in bookshops on "abnormal pregnancies", we were bluntly informed that there was no sign of a pregnancy in my uterus. This meant that I had either suffered a miscarriage or I was having an ectopic pregnancy. But whatever it was, I had lost the pregnancy and was sent back to the initial gynaecologist for confirmation.

This other gynaecologist was sympathetic to our tragedy, patiently explaining the procedure and answering as many questions as our frightened and anxious minds could muster. The timely, life-saving, laparoscopic surgery to remove my right Fallopian tube confirmed that gestation had been taking place outside of my womb.

I woke up to relief that the ordeal was over, and to embrace emotions: grief with my partner; anger at the medical practitioners and myself as the should’ves and could’ves played out; gratitude that I was in a safe solid physical and emotional space unconditionally offered by my parents. Save for a few close friends and my family, and people I had to tell to explain my impending absence from work, I kept this a secret from everyone else, silenced by an inexplicable shame. Perhaps, I mused wryly, the cultural practice of announcing the pregnancy after the first trimester was over is to prevent this shame. Though what was the exact source of shame, my brain could not comprehend.

Despite statistics showing that one in five pregnant women miscarry in the first trimester and that it is difficult to pin-point the reasons, the conversation I was having with myself was that I didn’t deserve the baby because of my doubts about being a good parent. Despite knowing that one out of 60 women have ectopic pregnancies, I blamed my past social drinking and smoking habits, which were the only one on the list of causes that I could hook on to, even though I abstained for months in preparation for the pregnancy. Despite my feminist beliefs that a woman is more than her role as mother, somehow, the failure of my reproductive ability has managed to define my failing as a human being.

It was also in those weeks that I started thinking about the healthcare and social systems that privilege the privileged. A system that grants those like me who can afford private, timely treatments that is a basic right (though this experience confirmed that compassion doesn’t necessarily come with money), the access to valuable information for making informed choices, and a solid social support system that allowed for time and care for full recovery. What happens to single unmarried young pregnant women, with little education and access to information, ekeing out a living in a factory, away from home, facing the same situation that I did? If more government hospitals, following Selayang and Putrajaya’s example, went ahead with privatising part of the public health service that would inevitably put a strain on the 30% of civil service doctors treating 70% of the nation’s patients, how quickly would surgery be available? Should money be the solution for jumping the queue, would kind employers pay for surgery and hospitalisation when faced with the reality that health insurance schemes state that "pregnancy-related surgeries are non-claimable"?

Painful as it was initially – and still is – to have conversations about my experience, these moments of sharing are uncovering more silent guilt, anger and shame from women around me. I am convinced that within us we carry much more. By speaking the often unspoken, I hope that the silence surrounding women on matters of sexual reproduction, sexuality and social justice will finally be broken.

Tze Yeng looks forward to the launch of Young Women Speak Out! by All Women’s Action Society on Oct 28, a collection of writings on matters that are usually unspoken.